The Baptist faith has a different beginning in the nation of Trinidad, as unlike the spiritual baptist tradition in the other countries where the religion developed in the plantations where the enslaved were sent, the religion in Trinidad was brought into the country by the Merikins, former American slaves who were recruited by the British to fight, as the Corps of Colonial Marines, against the Americans during the War of 1812.
[1][2] These American settlers brought with them the Baptist faith of the Second Great Awakening combined with, in the case of those from Georgia, the Gullah culture.
[4] Archbishop Granville Williams, who was born in Barbados, lived for 16 years in Trinidad and Tobago, where he witnessed the local Spiritual Baptists.
Due to a well received response in Barbados, he quickly established the Jerusalem Apostolic Spiritual Baptist Church in Ealing Grove.
The local name of the Spiritual Baptist in Trinidad are called the Shouters which derives from the characteristic practice of the religion.
[5] Spiritual Baptists in St Vincent are locally called the shakers due to their practice of invoking the Holy Spirit during their praise and worship.
The late opposition parliamentarian Ashford Sinanan moved to repeal the ordinance under the PNM government and was successful.
The colours of the headdress or clothes vary and represent the 'spiritual cities', the saints with which the individual most relates, or various qualities of belief.